Summary

Mardu Vehicles has been one of the most dominant decks in Standard over the last year plus, and it didn’t lose a lot due to rotation, making many players feel like it could reclaim its spot as top dog in Standard. It’s starting to do just that on MtGO, with a couple of different variants seeing play with a reasonable amount of success. The variant we’re featuring today keeps the deck in the Mardu color combination, but tries to make the deck more aggressive to better attack the format.

Much of the Vehicles decks of old can be found in this deck. Toolcraft Exemplar, Scrapheap Scrounger, and Heart of Kiran were all mainstays of the archetype and for good reason. Toolcraft Exemplar is nearly always a 3/2 attacker for 1 mana, getting the aggressive start to the game that this deck prefers. Scrapheap Scrounger is an artifact creatures (important for several cards in this deck) that hits hard, can crew vehicles, and can be brought back from the graveyard. Heart of Kiran is certainly one of the best cards in this format, as it’s a 4/4 vigilance attacker for just 2 mana, only demanding that you have a spare 3 power available to crew it. No planeswalkers hurts, but Heart will get by just fine.

Veteran Motorist saw a good amount of play in this deck, and rotation has left it as one of the best options for this archetype. A 3/1 is a bit flimsy, but its ability to really make vehicles hit hard is worth a spot. Bomat Courier has seen a massive uptick in play thanks to the makeup of this new Standard format. The innocuous 1 mana 1/1 with haste gets in a good amount of damage in the early game and helps this deck to not run out of cards in the mid to late game. Ruin Raider is a new inclusion in this deck from Ixalan, and boy is it a doozy. Triggering Raid in this deck is almost a foregone conclusion, meaning that Ruin Raider will reliably draw a card every single turn while providing additional beats or crewing a vehicle.

Hazoret the Fervent is a new addition to this deck, and it makes a lot of sense given the lack of 4 mana options available to this deck. It hits harder than anything else in the format and gets in important damage by throwing away useless cards in the late game. The aggressive slant of this deck makes it so that the drawback on Hazoret is rarely seen. Depala, Pilot Exemplar is another card that used to see play in Vehicles, and could very well be a good option again. As a 3/3 for 3 mana, it’s a decent attacker, but the very relevant dwarf and vehicles pumping plus the triggered ability on it makes it the perfect way to push through damage while being card advantageous into the late game.